Tag Archives: Childhood

Mud Night

Folklore:
Holding a Mud Night where a desert, called mud, is served and enjoyed by the family.

Context:
Informant described a tradition from her grandma who held Mud Nights. The night would be delineated through the desert served, mud. Informant described Mud as a chocolate pudding like desert with oreo cookies crushed on top. Also, she noted that looking up mud on the internet to describe the desert, but found they didn’t look similar with the photos found online. The night was special to the informant’s mother who experienced it throughout her childhood and even into adult years, mentioning she returned home during college for some of these events. Informant experienced a few as a young child. The informant noted even though they didn’t particularly like the desert the thing that was special about the Mud Nights were the gathering of the family. Talking with the informant they noted there wasn’t a clear knowledge on who started the tradition.

Analysis:
The celebration seems to be used as a experience from elder to child to help create a shared experience for the family. With the history and variation, it is a special celebration to bring connection between the elders and the youth. Informant noted it was specifically a tradition her grandmother stewarded and continued. It emphasized the importance of family and communicated values of care and joy with its members and participants.

The Baby Monitor

Age: 19

Context:

This story was told to me during a car ride at night back from a camping trip with friends. Everyone started going around and telling creepy or weird paranormal experiences they’ve had and when the topic shifted to technology the informant went on and told this story about their experience with their baby sister’s baby monitor as a kid.

CL:

“So this happened when I was around fifteen, and I still don’t really know what to make of it. My baby sister had just been born, so my parents had one of those baby monitors set up in her room, the kind that only does audio.

My room was right next to hers, and since she cried a lot at night, I got used to hearing little noises through the monitor when my parents left it on in their room or in the hallway.

One night, I was home alone babysitting while my parents went out to dinner. My sister was asleep, and I was downstairs watching TV. Everything was normal. Then I heard the monitor crackle. At first I ignored it because it always made static noises.

But then I heard someone whisper. Like… an actual whisper. I couldn’t make out what it said, but it sounded like a woman’s voice. I muted the TV and just sat there listening. Then I heard it again. Really soft, like right into the monitor. It sounded like, ‘It’s okay… go back to sleep.’ I froze. I remember staring at the monitor and thinking maybe my mom had come home without me hearing, but I would’ve heard the front door or footsteps. So I ran upstairs. My sister was asleep in her crib. Nobody else was in the room. I checked the closet, under the crib, the bathroom, everything. Nothing.

I grabbed my sister and brought her downstairs with me because I was so freaked out. I called my mom crying and told her to come home. She thought I was overreacting until they got back. My dad brought my sister upstairs and plugged the monitor back in to prove it was just static or interference or whatever. And then we all heard it. The monitor crackled and this voice came through. ‘Shhhhhh…’ Like right into it. My mom literally unplugged it immediately. The next day my dad bought a new monitor and threw the old one away. And it never happened again.

Later, my dad said it was probably signal interference from another house because the monitor was old and not encrypted or whatever. Like maybe someone else’s monitor or a walkie-talkie got picked up. But… I don’t know. The voice sounded like it was in the room. Not through a machine. It sounded close. Like someone leaning over her crib.”

Interviewer:

“Did the voice sound threatening?”

CL:

“No, honestly that’s what made it weirder. It sounded calm. Like soothing. If it had sounded creepy, I think I would’ve just assumed it was in my head. But it sounded… normal.”

Interviewer:

“Do you think it was paranormal?”

CL:

“I don’t know. Probably not. The interference thing makes sense. But hearing it with my whole family there made it harder to brush off.”

The Informant’s Thoughts:

She does not fully believe the event was paranormal, but she remains disturbed by how clearly she remembers the voice. The fact that it happened twice, once when she was alone and again in front of her parents, validated her fear in the moment.

She says what scared her most was not the possibility of a ghost, but the idea that a real stranger’s voice could somehow reach into her house and speak to her baby sister. In some ways, that felt scarier than anything supernatural.

My Thoughts:

I think what makes this story so creepy is how realistic it feels. Unlike a lot of ghost stories where someone sees a full figure or something impossible happens, this one has an explanation that actually makes sense. The signal interference idea is believable, which somehow makes it even scarier because it could happen in real life.

I also think the fact that the voice sounded calm instead of threatening makes the story way more unsettling. If it had been some distorted or obviously creepy voice, it would almost feel fake. But the fact that it sounded normal and soothing makes it feel more personal and invasive.

I find it interesting how technology changes the way ghost stories are told. Instead of hearing strange voices in a hallway or through the walls, now people hear them through baby monitors, phones, or speakers. It’s like modern devices create new ways for people to interpret weird experiences as paranormal.

I think the scariest part of this story isn’t even the idea of a ghost. To me, the thought that it could have been an actual stranger’s voice somehow reaching into the house is worse. That makes the story feel less like a supernatural haunting and more like a real invasion of privacy.

The Unwanted Cuddle

Age: 19

EC: Pick an age 7  or 10

Interviewer: 7 

EC: So, when I was 7 years old my parents and I took a trip to the Whaley House in San Diego. It’s old, it’s like this old western town?

Interviewer: Were you going to the whaley house looking for ghosts, or just to see what it was?

EC: My family is into weird freaky stuff like that and it’s the most haunted house in America so my parents were into that. We also thought it was a museum more than a haunted house. 

For the most part it seemed sort of like a hoax. My parents thought it was more like a museum than a haunted house but it was like a cute little museum house with a courtroom, a store, and stuff like that so I just thought we were on a boring tour.

So I was looking for stuff to do in this old house, and the tour guide said that it was possible to feel a presence, but it still felt unrealistic and a hoax.  

We walked into their dining room which was a pretty small room and it was a pretty big group, 15-20 people, and I wasn’t paying attention or listening to the tour guide because it was a bunch of history I didn’t know since I was 7.

I am wearing this little pink, magenta little hoodie, and I was just looking around the room and staring at things. I stared at the dining room table and remembered that I thought it looked a lot like my grandma’s house, and I am standing near the table with my hands by my side. I wasn’t the only kid on the tour, and so I am just standing there and I feel this other little kid grab my hand. 

I didn’t think anything of it because there were other little kids and I was a really cuddly child. So I feel this little hand, and I remember its smaller than mine and I have small hands, and literally there was nothing there.

My mom said I shot my hands back into my pocket and I was really spooked about it because it felt like holding my mom’s hand, like it was real. 

And I really wasn’t the sort of kid to make a big deal of things so we finished the tour and my mom just kept asking what happened and eventually I told her that, like, I don’t want to sound crazy, but I really felt a hand holding mine.

My mom tells me that in that room, what the guy was talking about was that the youngest daughter who was part of the whaley family, I don’t remember her name, contracted something, maybe TB? And died when she was still really little.

The thing was that people would say especially little girls or moms would feel a girl grabbing onto them if they were taller or holding their hands. They say it’s because she was really close with her mom. 

But when I told her that and I told her that I wasn’t even listening, she agreed that it was really weird even though she knew it was a hoax. 

Everything I was wearing and stuff was more from her perspective,  but what I remember is looking to my right and expecting to see a person holding my hand, and even after I looked over I could still feel the hand holding mine but there was nothing there. 

Context: This story was told by the informant, who got most of the story and the context of the Whaley family from her mom, and her perspective on the informant’s physical reaction. The actual reaction to the ghosts was all from her perspective. The informant has always believed in ghosts, but the part that made it feel like a gimmick to her was the way that she thought ghosts should have appeared to her, versus how they did (alone like her room, vs. in a museum). She has since been back to the Whaley house twice, and nothing has happened to her since. This story was told to me alone.

Analysis: The informant believes that it was truly a ghost, 100%. She thinks it’s an interesting house, and that when she was little, she didn’t fully see it as a scary place, but as she got older, the energy felt heavier. At first I really believed that the story was a hoax, but as my friend explained more about the story and the way that it genuinely moved her and changed the way she thought about ghosts, and even that visceral story that has stuck with her for so many years, I feel like it has to be a true story, or at least have some sort of truth behind it. 

The Ball that Came Back

“When I was growing up with my sister, we had shared a bedroom, and this was in Thousand Oaks, California.

And her bed was on one side of the room and my bedroom was on.

My bed was on the other side of the room. We were. One night, we were both in our beds, and we were tossing a ball back and forth to each other.

Right. You know, she missed when she went to throw the ball to me, she had, like.

Didn’t throw enough power, so went underneath my bed.

So it took about, like, you know, 10 seconds. I went, oh, faster. God, I gotta go under here. When I tried to reach underneath there, the ball went flying right to her.

Which scared her and I to, you know, to pieces. This is so needless to say. So that evening we went to bed, and in the middle of the night, I was woken up by my mom saying, are you okay?

Are you okay? And I didn’t know what was going on. I somehow had my tongue underneath. My tongue was severed.

Yeah, so I don’t know how. There’s no way you can bite. You can’t, like, you know, bite your tongue. That’s impossible. It was clean. Like, just a clean cut, too. Just, you know, the thing that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your jaw.

So that was completely cut. So, like, the. We were. I was raised Mormon growing up. I. I’m no longer Mormon. I actually believe in more spiritual, like, Native American Indian spiritual, that type of belief.

Anyway, she. So. So they. The priest came and took me. They didn’t take me to the hospital. I don’t know why. They. I went to church. The church had stitched it up. They did, like. Like, a cleansing blessing, which I thought was interesting in hindsight. This house. This house had. Was. There’s six siblings in my family. We always consider, like, there was just a weird, creepy thing.

This isn’t like that. This is the. The Terrence. It’s like, always weird creepy things that would happen.

Like my younger brother. We had a babysitter. My mom was actually kind of whatever. She went to babies. And my younger brother was somehow pushed out of the second story window.

And, yeah, he. So somehow he ended up being. He doesn’t remember because he was like, four or five.

He got up to the second story window and was thrown out, and he broke his.

Shattered his pelvis and stuff like that. No, he was younger because he was like three. He couldn’t even crawl yet. So he had to be really young. Anyway, this is the same house where this weird shenanigans would happen.

You know, you’d hear, like, you know, knocking, which we thought it was always the, you’re my brother, or, you know, because there’s six of us. You always thought it was like, oh, is one of the siblings kind of messing with you?

Right, right. Well, you know, after that experience of having that ball and, you know, being thrown, you know, you know, across the way and then having my tongue severed, you know, even more strange things started to happen.

That’s just kind of like where it kind of all started, you know, realizing, well, there’s probably more to this.”

Context

  • The informer has been my next-door neighbor for the last 17 years. She talked to me in a Zoom interview.
  • The story takes place in her childhood home
  • She told me this story because I asked if she had any ghost stories to share with me, now that I study this in college, and collecting field stories is one of our class activities.

Her thoughts

She believes this was the beginning of realizing that something paranormal was present in that house, with ongoing, unexplained forces at work. She supported that by adding several other incidents that no one could explain that followed that moment. She also said that this was the moment she started to be more aware and feel things. 

My thoughts

I thought this story is especially compelling because it starts as a game with a playful and innocent object – a ball – in the girls’ bedroom. But then, when the ball is under her bed and not near her sister, it suddenly seems to gain its own energy. She doesn’t throw it back – it “flies” on its own, or by some other force, which shifts the moment from something ordinary into something unsettling.

Later that same night, on that same side of the room, another unexplained event happens, and her tongue gets a clean cut and starts bleeding. The fact that both events are tied to the same space makes it feel less random and more connected, almost like that area of the room holds a kind of presence or energy. It creates a sense of the uncanny, where something familiar – a bedroom, a childhood game – starts to feel unfamiliar and unsafe.

What also stood out to me is that her parents did not take her to a doctor, but instead brought her to the church for treatment and a blessing. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems like this response reflects their belief system and how they interpreted what happened. Rather than seeing it as a purely medical issue, they may have understood it as something spiritual that required a religious response. That decision adds another layer to the story, because it shows how belief shapes action, especially in moments that are hard to explain.

She also describes this as the moment when she begins to realize that other strange things are happening around her. To me, this feels like a turning point, not just in the story, but in how she understands her environment. It reads almost like a liminal moment, where she moves from childhood innocence into a more aware stage, where everyday spaces no longer feel fully stable or predictable.

What makes the story especially strong is that it combines an unexplained physical event with a lasting injury, which gives it a real sense of stakes. It shows how something small and ordinary (the ball) can become physically disturbing, and how a personal space like a bedroom can take on an uncanny quality, with a lingering sense of “energy” that is hard to explain but clearly felt.

Her Thoughts

She believes this was the beginning of realizing that something paranormal was present in that house, with ongoing, unexplained forces at work. She supported that by adding several other incidents that no one could explain that followed that moment. She also said that this was the moment she started to be more aware and feel things. 

My Thoughts

I thought this story is especially compelling because it starts as a game with a playful and innocent object – a ball – in the girls’ bedroom. But then, when the ball is under her bed and not near her sister, it suddenly seems to gain its own energy. She doesn’t throw it back – it “flies” on its own, or by some other force, which shifts the moment from something ordinary into something unsettling.

Later that same night, on that same side of the room, another unexplained event happens, and her tongue gets a clean cut and starts bleeding. The fact that both events are tied to the same space makes it feel less random and more connected, almost like that area of the room holds a kind of presence or energy. It creates a sense of the uncanny, where something familiar – a bedroom, a childhood game – starts to feel unfamiliar and unsafe.

What also stood out to me is that her parents did not take her to a doctor, but instead brought her to the church for treatment and a blessing. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems like this response reflects their belief system and how they interpreted what happened. Rather than seeing it as a purely medical issue, they may have understood it as something spiritual that required a religious response. That decision adds another layer to the story, because it shows how belief shapes action, especially in moments that are hard to explain.

She also describes this as the moment when she begins to realize that other strange things are happening around her. To me, this feels like a turning point, not just in the story, but in how she understands her environment. It reads almost like a liminal moment, where she moves from childhood innocence into a more aware stage, where everyday spaces no longer feel fully stable or predictable.

What makes the story especially strong is that it combines an unexplained physical event with a lasting injury, which gives it a real sense of stakes. It shows how something small and ordinary (the ball) can become physically disturbing, and how a personal space like a bedroom can take on an uncanny quality, with a lingering sense of “energy” that is hard to explain but clearly felt.

Paper Origami Fortune Teller

Text:

Paper origami fortune teller (aka cootie catcher) is constructed by folding paper into a four-part interactive game used to reveal fortunes or answers to questions.

Context:

The informant recalls making it in school often during class or breaks with their peers. People would often decorate them and either write fortunes inside or responses. The games could range then depending on what was written. The informant can’t remember who taught them exactly but just that it was most likely another student.

Analysis:

This object is an example of material folklore, as it is a handmade craft that carries traditional knowledge and is transmitted informally within a folk group. However, the significance goes beyond the paper itself as it is nothing without its performance. This reflects how performance is a core aspect of folklore and lives on in our daily lives.

The fortune teller also demonstrates multiplicity in variation as the folding of the structure may be the same but the content can always change depending on the user. This allows for creativity and many variations from group to group. It adapts to new contexts and it much more wildly known because of that as almost everyone in class (while I spoke with my informant) was familiar with this material folklore.

Additionally, it functions within a younger folk group, like middle school, where traditions are usually transmitted peer to peer rather than adult to student. The act of teaching others how to fold and use the fortune teller reinforces the idea of group belonging and shares knowledge. The interactiveness of the object also gives it a play frame where students have created a temporary structural and rule-based system that feels separate from school life.

Lastly, there are aspects of magic and counter culture present as it mimics divination through fortune telling and prediction. Also I recall many times when a teacher would tell us to stop playing with them or confiscate them during class and it was a way to interact with peers and play within the structures of school.